Google is a dream job—if you’re happy staying in place

I’ve been an engineer at Google for about two years and I joined with something like the attitude you have now, but to be honest I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with working here. I’m going anonymous as several of my close coworkers and immediate superiors are active on Quora (and may even be following this question).

First though I should note that my experience is with one of the “unglamorous” teams - if you end up at DeepMind or X working on self-driving cars or whatever your experience will likely be vastly different, but also keep in mind that’s a tiny and very exclusive part of what Google does. Google is first and foremost an advertising company, and the bulk of the workforce (myself included) works on problems that ultimately boil down to optimizing ad revenue. What I would tell myself looking back is that a lot of the things I initially saw as big pluses of working at Google have a dark side.

• You are very well paid, but you live in one of the most desirable areas in the world. My starting salary plus equity right out of college was more than what my dad makes as a civil engineer with three decades of experience. That’s a definite plus - I’ve been able to travel the world, enjoy nice restaurants, buy gifts for people I care about, and other things my parents never had at my age. However, living in such a desirable area is a big minus for me - the suburbs are too quiet and snooty for my taste and rent is shockingly expensive (for scale, I used to live in Manhattan). San Jose is very meh - SF is fine but it takes so long to get there, which is going to be the story of your life anywhere in Silicon Valley.
• The prestige of the job is grossly disproportionate to job difficulty. People are immediately impressed when I tell them I work at Google, even around here where it’s not uncommon. A lot of the prestige comes from Google’s reputation for having a rigorous interview, which does not correspond in the slightest to the day-to-day reality of the job. Most of my job consists of fixing bugs and writing “glue” code to make different classes play nice together. I could have done my job as a junior in college - I don’t feel “pushed” and don’t think I’ve become a better programmer or engineer as a result of working here (I go into this more below).
• The caliber of employees is grossly disproportionate to job difficulty (see above). I’ve met some of the smartest most amazing people of my life working here, and they genuinely are a pleasure to talk to about nearly any topic. They are by and large grossly underutilized (I go into this more below). I and many of my peers get by doing only about two to three hours of “real” work a day and bumming around the rest of the time. I’ve consistently gotten very positive performance reviews so I know this isn’t because I’m working below expectations.
• 20% time is a myth. Contrary to popular belief, there is no expectation that you create and work on your own project. I don’t have a 20% time project and no one I know does. It’s not for lack of time either, as I definitely have the time but using it for a side project would probably be seen by higher-ups as not working hard enough on your team’s project. A lot of the job is about “looking busy.”
• Meritocracy quickly runs out. If you’re good at your job, you can rise quickly—up to a certain point. Your pay increases significantly (it can feel like they’re throwing money at you) but outside a few teams, your real influence or ability to decide what you want to work on does not. Rising into the positions where you have real responsibility is very much a game of politics, much as Google would like to deny it
• Working here engenders complacency. This is probably what disturbs me most about the company, not least because I see it slowly creeping into myself as well as the people around me. So many of my coworkers came here intending to use Google as a “stepping stone” to network, meet talented people, and pick up new skills that will help them ultimately do what they’re really passionate about, whether it’s their startup or going back to do a PhD or nonprofit work. Everyone and their mom had a pet startup at one point, and I can tell you none of them failed for lack of technical talent. For anyone you talk to, it’s always “just a few more years” until they save up enough seed funding to get going—then it’s “until our kids get older,” “until we finish paying off the house,” “until the kids go to college,” etc., etc. Some people have been saying they’ll quit in 6 months to launch their startup for ten years. Maybe some of them do—all power to them. But my guess is that Google knows the kind of people it’s getting, and has learned how to keep them here as “lifers”: they feed you, throw money at you, keep your load light and discourage change. You ease into a certain lifestyle outside of work—you get used to comforts like traveling, taking time off when you want, eating out, going to shows, maybe you get married and start looking to buy a house and settle down. At some point, the only direction you can move and maintain your quality of life is “sideways” - you could jump ship for Facebook or Twitter or Microsoft, but that’s little different from just staying in place. You can’t tolerate being “hungry” anymore—going back to the living room startup, living on cheap Chinese food and chasing VCs, or going back to school and trying to live on a grad student stipend. Just in my time here I’ve seen at least two people I know well try, then less than a year in give up and come back.
• Free food is pretty lit. I know they’re only feeding us to keep us constantly on site and working/talking to other Googlers but the food is consistently better than what I’d normally have and they regularly bring in world-class chefs, so no complaints there :)

I should say, whether Google is right for you really depends on the lifestyle you’re looking for. I certainly do have many colleagues who recognize all of the above, but then are like, “So what?” Maybe the work isn’t everything they had hoped, but on a Google engineer’s salary they’ve been able to buy a nice house, have kids, put their kids through college, support their parents through retirement, save for their own retirement etc. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. If settling down and raising a family is what’s important to you, the benefits of sticking it out at Google are pretty great. But if what you want is to use Google as a “stepping stone” to what you’re really passionate about, just be aware that Google has a way of “holding on.”